Ha! You’re back, even though The Bachelor Canada is over and we all know how it turns out. Last week’s finale saw Bachelor Brad Smith proposing to Bianka Kamber in the Barbados and off they cavorted into the sunset, to live happily ever after. So what’s left for us, the devoted viewers who accepted Brad’s roses week in and week out, hoping against hope that the former CFLer would find his lady love? Well, The Bachelor Canada: After the Final Rose special, that’s what, an hour of celebration and confession that could also be called “Tissue, Tyler, tissue!” with all the hankies host Tyler Harcott is passing out.

Plus, there is the inherent drama of Brad and Whitney facing off. She was the other woman in the Barbados, but he told her that they weren’t right for each other. She, to be fair, seemed to be ready to tell him the same thing, but when did she know that they should would break up? Duh, duh, duh! We will find out tonight.

First, though, there’s something we need to talk about. The numbers don’t lie: underneath your hard-as-gel-nails exteriors, you lot are a bunch of soft-hearted so and sos who believe in the power of love. (Good Lord, it’s come to this: I am quoting Celine Dion.) Last week, I asked what you thought of Brad and Bianka as a couple. And of the 2,369 people who responded, a full 67 percent (1,577) picked “The Real Deal: they’ll last 50 years.” That dwarfed the second response results of 25 percent (589). Get Real: I‘ll give them six months. And a mere nine percent (203) selected Really: They’re still together?

So don’t try pulling the “I only watch Bachelor Canada in an ironic way ‘cause I am way too cool to actually become emotionally invested in this baloney.” You do,too, care about Brad and Bianka and if their reality-TV romance will last. Then gather ‘round, true believers, and we’ll deconstruct what takes place in The Bachelor Canada: After the Final Rose. Because what good is love if you can analyze the hell out of it?

It’s good to know that hyperbole is alive and well, as host Tyler reminds us that “It was one of the most intense relationships we have ever witnessed.” I’m not sure if he’s talking Brad and Bianka, Brad and Whitney, or Brad and his hair (as we’ll see in a clip compilation a bit later), but it will all come out soon enough.

Brad

The man of the hour makes his entrance, looking dapper in a suit and tie. (The effect is somewhat marred by a ginormous Inspector Gadget watch on his wrist, though.) “This is the first time I have been in a group of people who know the outcome. . . It’s liberating after having to walk around with so many secrets and now I can almost pull a Tom Cruise and get up on the chair.” Do it! Do it! The appreciative audience will surely shower him with love (and a $5 bill or do if he starts taking it off).

Tyler asks if Brad thought this is where he would end up when he first agreed to come on the show. “Let’s completely be honest. Are you going to go into the house before and say, ‘My future wife is there!’ No, no, no because it’s crazy. You go into the house for the hope that they put that one person for you. I got lucky to be in that situation and have that one person that was there for me. It is the most surreal thing that happened. It shouldn’t have happened, but it really did. It’s crazy.”

But when did he know that Bianka was for him? “There were steps and there were arguments and there were things said back and forth, yet there was a constant growth. It wasn’t something that started out really high and fizzled out. It was something that week by week, it got better and better.”

Whitney

After the obligatory hyperbole (“Never did a relationship burn so bright, but fade out so quickly”), the 24-year-old from Calgary takes the hot seat in her short blue dress. “It’s been crazy, it really has,” she tells Tyler at the start. What’s it like for her out in the world now that people have seen her on the show? “It’s obviously a lot different ‘cause now people recognize me. To my face, people are obviously really nice. But then there’s the people who hide behind the computer that are this big huge tough guy who think that they think know me. No, you don’t know me.”

On to the obligatory clip trip, as we see Whitney’s time on the series, from accepting the First Impression Rose to Brad’s teary confession about the death of his friends to family dinners with her and Brad families to their ill-fated boat outing in Barbados. Tyler points out that her and Brad had tangible chemistry as a couple, but I just didn’t feel 100 percent confident that he was the guy I was going to marry.” When did the switch flip? “After the date in Penticton,” she replies, to “ooohs” from the studio audience.

While he says he finds it “shocking,” Tyler offers her an olive branch, trying to get her to clarify what she said. So was it game over in B.C. or a case of doubts about feelings? “You’re 100 percent right. I did start questioning things in Penticton,” she says. But does she have regrets about coming on the show, what with the backlash and all?

“No, not at all. No, I learned so much about myself, especially (by) watching. I am a closed-off person and sometimes it bothers me. It really does. I am really indecisive. . . I can never make up my mind.”

Brad and Whitney

Before Brad comes out to see/confront Whitney, we’re treated to video of the pair’s meltdown in the Barbados. During footage of their breakup in Whitney’s hotel room, we see her dabbing her eyes in the studio. As it ends, we see an audience member doing the same thing! Were they pumping onion fumes in the studio or something? The split was a good thing, people! Neither one of them wanted to end up with the other, so no harm, no foul, right?

Not so quick. Mr. Brad comes out and shares that he’s already experienced the coming apocalypse. “I had a nightmare about this once. The whole national television break up, then sitting in front of a group of people and talking about it,” he says with a strained smile. He calls her out on what he heard backstage about her feelings in B.C. (“That was four weeks into the show and we still had five weeks left” and then there’s the matter of what was said in the Maritimes.

“We’re in a hot tub in P.E.I. and I say, ‘Do you see a future with me,’ and you said, ‘100 percent, I see a future with you,’ and then the next scene you’re calling your sister, saying, ‘I don’t think I see a future with him.’ ” Whitney looks increasingly uncomfortable with this, and more so when Brad finishes up with, “I’m trying to gauge if this was an acting thing.”

“I never once acted out just for the sake of the TV show,” she says, but then gets caught up in her inability to convey her thoughts in a coherent manner, talking about how, decisions, relationships change over months. “It’s not that my mentality changed 100 percent. I could just tell that we weren’t on the same, you know, that intense connection that we had right off the bad,” she eventually comes up with.

“You should have wrote me something or told me about it. I look back on it, I feel like an idiot,” Brad says, asking her why she stuck around for the last five weeks if she wasn’t into him. At this, the audience breaks into applause and Ms. Whitney does not look pleased. “You had a choice to keep me on the show, too, you know.” Brad pulls a “who me?” face, but give the girl some credit: it takes two to dance the reality-TV tango, and he kept her around, despite her inability to talk about her feelings. Which, BTW, in the real world is a huge alarm bell when it comes to getting into a relationship with someone. Brad counters that she said what he wanted to hear and he liked her, so of course he would keep her around.

They go back and forth, with Brad telling her, “Saying stuff just to say it, it’s huge disrespect,” her replying “I never once acted,” and so on. Whitney mentions a fight (perhaps that night on the boat? It’s odd we never saw that bit), but Brad says “Wha?!” with Tyler eventually stepping in to offer Whitney the floor to explain herself more fully.

“I mean this from the bottom of my heart. You couldn’t have been (more) perfect time in my life . . . I want to get married and start a life and have kids.” Brad goes Dr. Phil

“I do not want to vilify you here,” Brad says, before goes all Dr. Phil and delivers Whitney a reality check. “inside of you, you do have the ability to say what is on your mind . . . All you have to do is try to figure out what the disconnect between the head and the heart is. You talk about marriage, you talk about kids, but you can’t even tell someone how you are feeling. You really have to evaluate what you need in your life to be able to spit it out.”

“I stayed because I truly had feelings for you. I do. I think that you are an amazing guy.” Cut to crying audience member. And Whitney is crying now, too. “The whole experience has been crazy. You have no idea the stuff I go through now. Yeah, it frickin’ sucks. I never thought it would be like this, the way it is now,” she says.

Brad says he will always stand up for her, but she needs to realize how she appears to others. They are parting as friends, with Whitney saying, “Just as much as I wanted to be happy, he deserves to be happy, just as much.” But enough of the drama, what might have beens and finger pointing, it’s time for the B+B show, after a rapid-fire Q&A with Tyler and Brad! (Cue happy music.)

Brad and Bianka

Out comes Ms. Bianka, looking fab in a short sequined patterned skirt and black mesh top. She gives her fiancée a big hug and they have a quick smooch before coming to sit on the couch. “When I say that I won on the lotto on coming onto the show, it was because she was there at the end,” he says . . . and here come the waterworks! Solidifying their status as a couple, Bianka gives him the gears, laughingly asking Tyler for a Kleenex. “I’ve never been in this situation in my entire life,” he starts, noticing that Bianka is now tearing up, too. So he leans in for a kiss and to dab her tears before continuing, “To be honest, I’ve never been a situation in my entire life where I’ve ever wanted anything more. And she’s it.”

“Awww!” goes the studio audience, and Tyler weighs in with, “Oh, God, it looks like you guys are in love.” We got a lot of their story last week, when they did media for what they life is looking at now: he moved in with her and her parents in Mississauga while they look for a place of their own; how they kept their relationship on the down low for months; how she feels about seeing him kiss other girls on the show (not great, but she ended up with him, so fair deal).

And in the obligatory relationship recap through video from the series, we see something new: “I will get down on one knee and ask you to marry me if you don’t. I won’t let you get away.” Brad said it? Nope, that would be Bianka when they were in the café in Barbados. Let that serve as a reminder that we, the viewers, only see what the producers want us to see. The people we see on the screen are real, but they come to us in a carefully prepared package.

And speaking of pretty packages, let‘s take another look the proposal, shall we? Tissue, Tyler, tissue! Say what you want about the reality-TV genre; if these two crazy kids do make it, they are going to have one kick-ass video scrapbook . . . as long as they edit out all those other chicks.

Before we close the book on The Bachelor Canada, I’d like to say thanks for reading these recaps. They were tons of fun to do and it was great getting to listen in on your thoughts on the show. But what will you do now that the bloom is off the rose and there is no more living vicariously through B+B? That televised fire log just isn’t going to cut it this year and ABC’s The Bachelor doesn’t start until January. Might I be so bold as to suggest tracking down a DVD of Lost in Austen? It’s a delightful miniseres from Britain in which our modern-day heroine is transported into a living, breathing Pride and Prejudice. This trailer doesn’t do it much justice, with the jarring soundtrack and silly voiceover, but it’s a lovely little bit of romantic escapism. And eye candy! Check out the fountain scene at 1:16; consider it an early Christmas present.

So, now that everyone knows that Brad Smith proposed to Bianka Kamber on Wednesday’s finale of The Bachelor Canada, what’s up next for the couple?

“I am moving into her parents’ house, as of tonight,” Brad says over the phone from Toronto on Thursday. “As of last night,” Bianka chimes in with a laugh.

“We are going to look for a house and in the meantime, her parents have graciously said, ‘Come stay with us,’ ” Brad says.

For those who don’t watch the series, The Bachelor Canada series featured Brad looking for his lady love among a pool of 25 women from across the country. Over two months, the field narrowed to two: Bianka, a 28-year-old nurse from Mississauga, and Whitney Lee, a 24-year-old admin assistant from Calgary.

On Wednesday’s finale, set in Barbados, Brad told Whitney he wouldn’t be choosing her and proposed to Bianka. (At this, a nation cheered. Whitney’s inability to express her emotions was one of the touchstones of her televised relationship with the former CFL player.) When the cameras turned off, Brad and Bianka had two weeks of alone time on vacation, courtesy of the show.

“It was pretty much the exact time where I tried to get a minister to marry us ASAP,” Brad says.

I laugh, but the couple doesn’t. Seriously?

“No, actually I did. I wanted to get engaged, to elope, but because she is Croatian, we thought we would involve the family. I wouldn’t ostracize myself that way. We’ve had three subsequent trips since then. I brought my parents up and we played board games and drank beers with my mom and my dad. We’ve had a lot of substantial time together.”

It’s been five months since they wrapped shooting, and Bianka says they’ve kept the relationship going through Skype, talking on the phone and their time away together. It’s all been on the down low as per the show’s rules about not revealing who Brad ended up with. On Wednesday, though, Bianka and her family had about 60 people over to their home to watch the finale, and Brad walked in about 15 minutes from the end of the show.

“It was just insane. We didn’t get any sleep last night. Maybe about 30 minutes,” she says.

And while Brad might have sweated finally meeting his fiancee’s friends and extended family, the party showed him there was nothing to worry about.

“Where it should be awkward, all those people who know Bianka that well looked at her and understood how happy she is. We were worried that we would kind of have to try to convince (them), but because of how realistic I was at the beginning and the way she came off on the show, there is no convincing. It’s like, ‘We want them to work.’ ”

As for watching the eight episodes of The Bachelor Canada where Brad courted a variety of suitors (there was smooching going on), Bianka takes the long view.

“The bigger picture is where I am today . . . If I had not been with Brad, I probably would have taken it a lot harder. But I’m with him; the rest is history. It’s just part of the journey of what brought us here today.”

(And they get to relive that on The Bachelor Canada: After the Final Rose, which airs Wednesday on Citytv. They’ll both be on the special, as will Whitney.)

Brad adds, “If, at the end of the day, if you’re going to look back and be sad about the process that we both had to go through, then we’re wouldn’t be looking at it in the right frame of mind, which is, ‘Our life starts today.’ We’ve been dating now for five months, which should be a really difficult time (but) has been relatively painless because we’ve gotten so close. We’re just looking forward to this day (of beginning life together outside the show) more than anything else.”

And that life will include plenty of fun. I mention that we got to see more of the couple’s goofiness together in the final episode. Brad agrees.

“They can play it however they want to show our relationship, but Bee will tell you 95 percent of who I am is complete and utter jokes. I think if they would have showed it a little earlier (on The Bachelor Canada), people would have been, ‘Oh, it’s her (Bianka), 100 percent.’ You know what I mean? Because we got to the point when we went from zero to 100 was so fast.”

I ask about that, about when they each got the sense that this was something that could live on its own outside the lights and constructed reality of a TV show.

“It was little by little. Every single time we spent time with each other, it just got better and better,” Bianka says. “It really was real for us. There’s the show aspect, but it just felt as natural as can be.”

“In the most unnatural setting” Brad adds. “When we were flying over the iceberg in Newfoundland in a helicopter and she said, ‘Do you think we will ever do this kind of thing again?’ And I said, ‘Babe, I couldn’t afford to start the engine on this thing.’ But she was just realistic. She’s a normal girl; I’m a normal guy. And the way the show has to do it is put the emphasis on the relationship and less about the tangible values that someone brings outside of the emotional ability to want to settle down.”

As for that, the whole marriage thing, is it going to happen? They both say that’s the plan. As for The Bachelor Canada: Brad and Bianka’s Awesome Wedding? (And if so, please, please, please let Brad’s sister Ashley give the toast to the groom. That girl rawks!)

“Never say never, because we never thought we would end up where we are today,” Bianka points out. Brad says, “I would want people to know that it wasn’t just to be on TV again. The more important part is to have a relationship and to have people understand that this is real. Obviously, if that was something that came up, we’d look at it for sure, but for now our focus is on basically just starting our relationship. And getting married as soon as possible.”

Awww! Are you reaching for a tissue? Brad might be, too, considering how many tears he shed on the show. “Stock in Kleenex went way up last night,” Bianka jokes. Well, at least he’s a pretty crier, right? “I am an ugly crier!” at which Bianka points out (with a laugh, it should be noted), “The trembling lips!”

All goofing aside, what does the couple want people to know about them, seeing as how they were presented on the series was a carefully crafted package created by the producers? “Bee is probably the most understanding person I’ve met. I’m a very flawed guy and where a lot of other people would be quick to see these as character faults, she takes everything with the utmost understanding,” Brad says. “And honestly, she’s one of the funnier girls that I’ve ever been around.”

Bianka says, “I wouldn’t go back and change anything on the show. Now is our opportunity to show people that what we are like and that is really real. I can go back and say, ‘It was like this,’ ‘It was like that.’ But I don’t think people can see past the show.”

And the closing words go to The Bachelor Canada himself: “It’s tough to understand how much goes into that show, but we understand that we are lucky that we both came off in a good way. And that we have the idea of the big picture and what’s most important. And that’s the last five months and the next 50 years.”

All together now, “Awww!” I’m a sucker for a happy ending, so I’m rooting for the two crazy Canucks and have become emotionally invested in the whole darned thing. But that might just be the Sauvignon Blanc talking. What do you think? As always, sound off below. I’ll see you next Wednesday for The Bachelor Canada: After the Final Rose.